One of the best things I did for my blogs is create in-depth content clusters like never before and the payoff has been amazing (as I’ve shared the progress of my blogs in various posts).
Hopefully, a lot of you do it for your own blogs and client sites already but in case not, here’s how it paid off for my blogs:
- 65,000 clicks/day
- 35,000 clicks/day
- 25,000 clicks/day
- 10,000 clicks/day
- 6,000 clicks/day
And yes…
It Results in that Holy F*** Traffic!
I used to think I was clustering and publishing subtopics together but looking back, I was doing it at a shallow level.
Let’s take an example. Suppose you love cats and have a niche blog on kitty a la cats. Cool.
Let’s say you’ve found a keyword, something like, “how to litter train a kitten”.
Now, what I do is spend additional time looking at keywords and try to come up with 10-20 other articles/keywords/questions people have about litter training.
Perhaps I’ll find keywords like:
- how to litter train a feral cat
- how to litter train a stray cat
- will my cat litter train her kittens
- why is my litter trained cat pooping everywhere
- why is my litter trained cat peeing everywhere
- which cat litter is the best for the environment
- can you potty train cats to go outside
- toilet train kitten to go outside
.. and if you can find more, awesome.
You can additionally take the “toilet train” keyword and dig further into subtopics of toilet-training cats.
Also, the same goes for “cat litter” in that list of keywords. What topics and subtopics can be covered here and how many angles? For instance, is there cat litter for cats who have allergies?
So going back to it, one keyword, “how to litter train a kitten” lead us to that initial list of keywords and two other subtopics that we can explore more thoroughly.
You could end up with three thorough content clusters around these main keywords: “litter training cats”, “cat litter”, and “toilet/potty train cats”.
The key is in drilling down as much as possible within each topic and then follow the tread for other subtopics.
Why Content Clusters Bring in Amazing Rankings and Holy F*** Traffic
A super cool part about organizing clusters and publishing articles this way is that you can think and organize the internal linking part much more strategically.
In that sense, you’re doing more “complete” on-page SEO and Google rewards you once it sees such topically relevant content being covered so thoroughly on your blog.
Using this strategy, I have found short-tail and long-tail keywords ranking well within days and weeks.
With all this said, consider a site that only covers three articles on litter training a cat while your blog covers every angle of litter training you possibly can.
Which one do you think is covering this topic more thoroughly?
Further Examples
Content clustering is one of the main reasons that I’ve been able to pull off getting decent traffic to new blogs within the 2-3 month range and, with established blogs, you can see rankings within days or a couple of weeks!
It’s a super simple concept too:
- If you are going to write an article on “how to poopy train a puppy”, then come up with 10-20 other articles around bathroom training puppies.
- If you are going to write an article on “how walking helps depression”, then you can look up other articles about what types of other exercises help depression and why.
- If you are going to write an article on “best food for senior dogs with joint pain”, think of what other articles you can come up with that are nutrition-related that can help senior dogs with their joint pain.
I take the idea of clustering content as far as I can take it. I exhaust any and every angle I can.
When you start with a seed keyphrase, it will lead you to two or three other topics which you should explore as well.
That’s how you end up with a successful blog with serious traffic and revenue!
In Summary
Planning your content clusters will payoff in rankings, traffic, and revenue.
Content clusters are one of the main reasons all of my blogs, new and old, have taken off within the timeframe that they have.
Have questions? Ask in the AP FB Community!